


these are the hands of fate

by surrenderer



Series: play it good and right [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Background Relationships, F/M, Jon Snow is Not a Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 07:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19998070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surrenderer/pseuds/surrenderer
Summary: Their relationship is only two and a half months old, ten weeks total, and Sansa’s been on the road for eight of them.





	these are the hands of fate

**Author's Note:**

> title from taylor swift's 2nd best song, "state of grace," and a few themes throughout the fic came from her lyrics.
> 
> i'm considering making this a whole universe, but let's see how motivated i am to put pen to paper.

Sansa takes the towel that one of the stagehands offers her as soon as she steps off and down the stairs, blotting delicately at her makeup. Theon is right behind her, wiping at his face and arms, and the rest of the band follows him. The roar of the crowd is deafening, even with her in-ears on, and it only gets worse as Sansa takes one out to give her ear a break.

“Good show, good show,” Margaery says, clapping her hands and ushering all of them further down the hall. “One minute ‘til encore, so drink your water, wipe down, and head back up.” She shoves opened bottles into each of their hands, and pretends not to notice when Arya just pours half of one right over her head, in-ears and all the other electronics strapped to her be damned.

When Sansa looks around, she can see their friends and family cheering as wildly as anyone else in this amphitheater that seats more than five thousand, in their home territory and less than thirty minutes’ drive from the Stark home. She smiles and waves when she catches her mother’s and Robb’s eyes, but she isn’t looking for anyone in particular.

She’s not looking for a mess of black curls, either loose around his face or pulled back into a small bun, and she’s not looking for grey eyes that always seem to see right through her public mask. But she can’t help but look for him anyway.

After the last three songs and the adoring screams and the white confetti cannons, when she’s finally done saying goodbye to everyone backstage, Sansa finds Arya tucked in the corner with Gendry. At this point, she’s so used to finding them in all sorts of positions that their sweet kissing seems as innocent as the two of them holding hands.

“I’m heading home,” she tells them, even if they haven’t even glanced her way yet. “Do you want to come with?” She and Arya share a condo in town because they needed a space away from the family home, but ever since last year, she’s been spending more and more time at Gendry’s, and Sansa’s just waiting for the day Arya tells her that she’s got the place to herself from now on.

“We’re heading back to his, probably,” Arya responds when she pulls away from Gendry’s mouth long enough to say anything. He, at least, blushes when Sansa just raises a brow at him. “Hot Pie and the whole gang came out tonight too, so we’re going down to the pub for a bit to say hi to everyone. Gendry lives closer to there anyway.”

Sansa nods and tells them to have fun, and to not drink so much that they’ll be too hungover for the party tomorrow. Catelyn is so happy to have her daughters home, riding off the high of a successful radio single and a critically acclaimed album that’s allowed them to sell out stages across Westeros, that she insisted on a welcome-back party at the Stark house tomorrow. No one had the heart, or courage, to tell her that all her daughters wanted to do was sleep for a week after coming home from tour. Even now, at home, they still have press to do for the next two weeks before they have any semblance of an extended break.

Arya rolls her eyes at Sansa’s reminders. “Yes, _mother_ ,” she says as she turns back to Gendry. “I saw Jon lingering by the door, by the way.” It’s dropped casually, as is Arya’s way, but she knows that the nugget of information is anything but unimportant to Sansa.

She tries not to smile and is mostly successful; her lips twitch upwards for a moment and she knows Arya catches it, from the way she smirks. _Cool and casual, Stark. Don’t blow your cover._ “I’ll just say hi to him, then.” She turns away from the happy young couple; Arya’s given her the twin gifts of their condo to herself for the night and Jon’s whereabouts, so in return, she’ll give her the gift of semi-privacy in the darkness of the backstage area with Gendry. So she ducks back into the green room, mostly emptied of their things by now, to grab her backpack and look in the mirror quickly.

Most of her heavy stage make-up has been wiped off as soon as she got off the stage because she hates how it feels on her skin, but she left the smoky eye because Margaery did such a great job with it tonight. Her black t-shirt is comfortable and _clean_ and smells like laundry detergent, a gift from Catelyn before the show, her jeans have the perfect number of rips and tears, and she eyes the leather jacket hanging on the hook for a second before she makes up her mind and slips it back on. It’s colder in the North than anywhere else in Westeros, and while in Dorne, she was playing their shows in tiny tank tops, she can’t get away with it here.

Besides, Jon loves it when she looks like the rock star she is.

Her hair is already a tousled mess, so there’s no need to run her hands through it, but Sansa reapplies her dark red lipstick, and watches in the mirror as the door opens and Jon slips inside.

“I didn’t see you backstage earlier,” she says as casually as she can, like her hands aren’t shaking at the amount of effort it takes to not rush over to him immediately and _touch_ him to make sure he’s real and here.

Jon smiles sheepishly. “I thought I could get out of the station a bit early, but we got a call right as I was thinking about leaving. By the time I got here, you guys were about to get up on stage. I didn’t want to distract you."

Sansa rolls her eyes, even if he’s right, because Jon would’ve been a horrible distraction in his tight black button-up with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and black jeans and boots. She can see the white wolf tattoo on his forearm from here. “You wouldn’t have been a _distraction_. I’m a professional. I’m the _Red Wolf_ , in case you haven’t heard.”

A nickname given to her by their fans, then picked up by the media, and then by her detractors who use it with a sneer on their faces, who say that a rock band led by a woman, by a _Stark_ from the North, will never amount to anything. There’s a nickname for each member of The Pack: Arya is the Small Wolf and she’ll punch anyone who calls her that to her face, and Theon is the Sea Wolf for the year he spent on the seas with his sister’s fishing fleet before coming back to the band. Robb was the Young Wolf, taken from his short-lived solo career before he decided that his younger sister was a better singer than he was.

Jon chuckles, the sound sending a shiver down Sansa’s spine. “How could I not know? You’re all Tormund talks about. Every time you’re on the cover of a magazine, he buys it and leaves it in my locker. He says he needs to support his fellow redheads.”

“Well, I’m glad _someone_ cares,” Sansa jokes, like she’s calm and relaxed and not wound tight from his mere presence in the room. “I was starting to think no one liked us.”

Jon’s too close now, or maybe not close enough. Sansa can’t make up her mind about it. “You’ll always have your mom, and Bran and Rickon. Robb and Jeyne. Brienne. Margaery too.”

“Margaery’s paycheck depends on us, of course she likes us.”

“Margaery’s even richer than you are, she doesn’t need a band manager’s paycheck,” Jon points out, “And I like you, and my paycheck doesn’t depend on you.”

 _You,_ not _you guys_ , or _the band_. _You._ “Of course you like us, Robb would punch you if you didn’t,” Sansa points out in turn as she pretends to ignore how close Jon has gotten. Damn him for how he affects her.

A soft touch to her wrist, and then an arm around her waist. “Robb absolutely would punch me, because I like you too much,” Jon murmurs, and then finally, he’s close enough that Sansa can wind her fingers into his curly hair and pull him into a kiss.

They both sigh into it, a mix of relief and longing and joy from being together again. Jon must’ve popped a mint before coming inside, Sansa thinks, and wishes she had the foresight to do the same.

“I missed you,” he mumbles against her mouth before meeting her again, and again, and again. It’s hard for him to get time off to visit when she’s on the road, and crackly phone calls in the secrecy of her bunk or the bathroom can only do so much to alleviate the tension and the strain of not being able to touch each other.

Their relationship is only two and a half months old, ten weeks total, and Sansa’s been on the road for eight of them. Two weeks of bliss before she was hopping on a bus and leaving him behind. It’s been a sweet sort of pain, knowing that there’s someone good and right and _real_ waiting at home for her, if she could only be patient for a few more weeks, and then a few more days. And to know that Jon felt the same way, and was just as desperate for her to come home, makes the small knot in Sansa’s chest loosen.

“Me too,” she sighs when they finally break apart, his arms around her waist and her fingers in his hair. There’s a smear of dark red on Jon’s lips from her own and she smiles fondly at him. “I’m glad you made it. I thought I’d have to wait for you at my place, if you couldn’t leave the station in time.”

“Please, The Pack’s biggest show in their hometown? Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And Tormund would’ve covered for me no matter what,” he says, eyes twinkling and lips curving up in a small smile. “He’s taking my shift tomorrow night and I’ll take the morning after, so I’ll just be on call and I can be at your party."

When they’d talked last week about it, Sansa in the back room of the bus as it sped along through the Riverlands, Jon at the Winterfell fire station between emergencies, he hadn’t been sure if he could get the time off. And he’d been worried about Robb and Catelyn and _everyone_ finding out about the shift in their previously-casual friendship. The thought of Jon being there makes her heart skip a beat. They’re _serious_ now. They’re not just a casual fling, they’re not just friends with benefits, and Jon didn’t forget about her as soon as she left him behind for the sake of the music.

It makes Sansa want to kiss him and never stop.

“It’s not _my_ party,” she says primly instead, “it’s the _band’s_ party. And Robb keeps saying that you never have time to hang out with him anymore, he’ll be ecstatic to see you outside the station."

Jon rolls his eyes, but he moves his hands from her waist down to her hips instead and Sansa forgets what they were talking about a moment ago. “I haven’t had time to hang out with him because I spent all my free time in his sister’s bed before she left to go be a rock star, and if he knew all of that, he’d punch my lights out, whether or not she’s the _Red Wolf_.”

A bed sounds like a great idea right now, just like the couch in the green room sounds like a great idea. They haven’t seen each other, touched each other, in eight long weeks. But Sansa isn’t nearly that reckless, not when they could be walked in on at any moment. She’s not Arya and Jon’s not Gendry, for the Seven’s sake. “Well, we’re going to have to tell him tomorrow, so maybe you should bring an ice pack to the party just in case,” she says, kissing Jon softly again because she just can’t help herself now that they’re reunited. It’s hard to believe he’s standing right here in her arms, her lipstick smudged on his mouth and everything. “But I want to have my way with you before he does. So let’s go home.”

Jon raises a brow, but immediately lets her go and takes a step back, despite Sansa’s frown at the sudden rush of cool air between them. But he makes up for it when he slides his fingers between hers instead, and when he raises their hands so he can kiss her knuckles. His eyes lock with hers and even with his usual solemn stare, she can find a smile in his gaze.

She smiles back at him and tugs him towards the door. She has a very, very good feeling about this one.


End file.
